# Twin Town (1997 film)
**Twin Town** is a 1997 British black comedy crime film directed by Kevin Allen, written by Allen with Paul Durden, and set in Swansea, Wales. It follows Julian and Jeremy Lewis, two drug-taking, car-stealing brothers known locally as "the twins" even though they are not twins, who take revenge on a local businessman after their father is injured working for him and refused compensation.[1](https://canolfanffilmcymru.org/ffilmiau/twin-town/) • [2](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/trash-town-1.61701) The film stars real-life brothers [Rhys Ifans](https://www.edgepedia.org/rhys-ifans), in his first major movie role, and Llŷr Ifans, alongside [Dougray Scott](https://www.edgepedia.org/dougray-scott).[3](https://www.gcs.ac.uk/news/twin-town-writer-inspires-students)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writers | Kevin Allen (his debut feature), screenplay by Allen and Paul Durden[4](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/baaf930b-d3ae-55ba-8b36-0adb117fd3f8/twin-town) |
| UK release | 11 April 1997; 99 minutes; certificate 18; languages English and Welsh[1](https://canolfanffilmcymru.org/ffilmiau/twin-town/) |
| Principal cast | Rhys Ifans (Jeremy Lewis), Llŷr Ifans (Julian Lewis), Dougray Scott (Terry Walsh), Huw Ceredig (Fatty Lewis), William Thomas (Bryn Cartwright)[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120394/fullcredits/) |
| Executive producers | Danny Boyle and Andrew Macdonald, the director and producer of *Trainspotting*[2](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/trash-town-1.61701) |
| Budget and box office | Budget $3,300,000; worldwide gross $1,039,657, of which $127,923 was domestic (US)[6](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0120394/credits/) |
| Critical reception | 46% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 13 reviews; 89% audience score[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/twin_town) |
| Festival and awards | Screened at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival in 1997; composer Mark Thomas won a BAFTA Cymru for the score in 1998[8](https://pulseofcinema.com/en/film/twin-town/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The Lewis family lives in a caravan on a mobile home site in Swansea. The brothers Julian and Jeremy spend their time joking around, taking drugs, and stealing cars. Their father, Fatty Lewis (Huw Ceredig), falls from a ladder while doing roofing work for Bryn Cartwright (William Thomas), a wealthy local businessman and small-time gangster. When the brothers demand compensation and Cartwright refuses, they seek revenge.[1](https://canolfanffilmcymru.org/ffilmiau/twin-town/)
The feud escalates from trivial deeds into progressively nastier behavior by both sides, ending in murders. Caught up in the conflict are two local police officers, Greyo (Dorien Thomas) and Terry Walsh (Dougray Scott), who are on Cartwright's payroll, which compromises their conduct.[9](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/t/twin_town.html) Roger Ebert, the longtime film critic of the *Chicago Sun-Times*, described the film's mix of elements: beatings, a murder, drugs, two crooked cops, the destruction of a soccer field, karaoke sessions, a massage parlor, and an ending involving a local choir.[10](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/twin-town-1997)
## Production and the Trainspotting connection
**Origins.** Kevin Allen, an actor making his debut as a feature director, conceived the film after making *Rotten to the Core*, a BBC video documentary about Glasgow's ice-cream wars. He first imagined it as what he called "a tight-arsed, over-worthy piece of issue-led docu-drama" and turned it into a comedy because, he said, comic writing was easier to get commissioned.[11](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/made-in-wales-1264852.html) The film was produced by [Peter McAleese](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-mcaleese), with production companies including Agenda, Aimimage Productions, and Figment Films.[1](https://canolfanffilmcymru.org/ffilmiau/twin-town/) • [4](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/baaf930b-d3ae-55ba-8b36-0adb117fd3f8/twin-town)
**The Welsh Trainspotting.** Danny Boyle and Andrew Macdonald, respectively the director and producer of *Trainspotting* (1996), took executive producer credits on Twin Town, and Allen had a small part in their film. Allen admitted that without the huge success of *Trainspotting* his own debut would almost certainly not have been made, and Polygram marketed the film as "the Welsh Trainspotting", complete with a soundtrack album.[2](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/trash-town-1.61701) Allen resisted the label, telling *The Independent* that "this film is not a Welsh film", though it had "an intrinsic Welshness because we set it in Swansea"; he also insisted that neither he nor Durden had seen Boyle's film when they started work.[11](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/made-in-wales-1264852.html) Critics generally judged the comparison unflattering to Twin Town: the *Irish Times* reviewer Michael Dwyer wrote that it did not approach *Trainspotting* in scale, ambition, or achievement, and appeared designed merely to shock.[12](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/twin-geeks-1.66029)
The film was shot on a tight schedule; a BBC2 behind-the-scenes documentary reported an eight-week shoot compressed into six weeks with a first-time director.[13](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/today-s-television-5571446.html) It was filmed around [Port Talbot](https://www.edgepedia.org/port-talbot) as well as Swansea, with several scenes shot outside Swansea railway station.[14](https://herald.wales/national-news/entertainment/twin-town-cast-reunites-for-new-film-shot-in-wales/) • [15](https://railwaymoviedatabase.com/twin-town/) The British Board of Film Classification recorded the production year as 1996 and classified the cinema version, distributed by Polygram Filmed Entertainment, on 24 January 1997.[16](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/twin-town-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yote1ndk)
## Reception and box office
Critical response in 1997 was mixed to negative. Rotten Tomatoes records a 46% Tomatometer from 13 reviews against an 89% audience score.[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/twin_town) Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, writing that he was not sure where the movie wanted to go, and that while *Trainspotting* confidently distinguished between comedy and the appalling, Twin Town was less sure-footed.[10](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/twin-town-1997) The *Washington Post*'s Desson Howe called it a mean-spirited farce in which the humanity and the punch lines were missing.[17](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/05/30/twin-town-double-trouble/c594b98c-4d76-4943-aeca-8b40d3aa3d45/) The *Los Angeles Times* found that the comedy turned so savage it was difficult to keep laughing after an engagingly rowdy start.[18](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-16-ca-59173-story.html) Reviewers did single out the leads: Time Out wrote that Llyr Evans and Rhys Ifans displayed a louche rude-boy energy that betokened fine things for the future.[19](https://www.timeout.com/movies/twin-town)
Commercially the film was modest by international standards. [Box Office Mojo](https://www.edgepedia.org/box-office-mojo) records a budget of $3,300,000 and a worldwide gross of $1,039,657, with $127,923 of that from the United States, where Gramercy Pictures released it on May 9, 1997.[6](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0120394/credits/) A separate account gives the budget as £1.7 million.[8](https://pulseofcinema.com/en/film/twin-town/) Of the three high-profile Welsh features of 1997, Twin Town reached the largest commercial audience, and its DVD sales remained strong for years afterward.[20](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/film/twin-town-and-welsh-cinema-the-late-1990s)
## Place in Welsh cinema
1997 was described as a watershed year for English-language cinema in Wales, with three features by young directors: *House of America* ([Marc Evans](https://www.edgepedia.org/marc-evans)), Twin Town (Kevin Allen), and *Darklands* (Julian Richards). All three sought to re-read traditional ways of seeing Wales exemplified by *How Green Was My Valley*.[20](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/film/twin-town-and-welsh-cinema-the-late-1990s)
**Irreverence and its critics.** The film's trailer ran through a list of Welsh cultural emblems, from rugby and Tom Jones to male voice choirs, [Snowdonia](https://www.edgepedia.org/snowdonia), and sheep, before asking whether that was really the sum of thousands of years of Welsh culture. This irreverent treatment of traditional Welsh representation attracted the displeasure of a range of people, including clergymen and the Wales Tourist Board. Against these criticisms, others argued that the film marked a new cultural maturity, as Wales gained the confidence to laugh at the parodying of its own cultural icons in a vein similar to the Irish television series *Father Ted*.[20](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/film/twin-town-and-welsh-cinema-the-late-1990s) Academic commentary has noted the film's use of [South Wales](https://www.edgepedia.org/south-wales) dialect, Welsh-language phrases, and the vandalizing of a rugby pitch as part of this clash with traditional imagery.[21](https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3515/4/BoschiElena_Sep2010_3515.pdf)
**Lasting status.** Twenty years after release, scholars describe Twin Town as one of Wales's best-loved films, enjoying cult status in the pantheon of Welsh cinema, with its appeal attributed in part to younger viewers and its use of language.[22](https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa44723/Download/0044723-05102018094029.pdf) Marc Evans, director of *House of America*, offered a retrospective judgment that his film and Twin Town were "not the first of a new generation of films but the last of the old", still preoccupied with the stereotypes of an older Wales even as they undermined them; Justin Kerrigan's *[Human Traffic](https://www.edgepedia.org/human-traffic)* (1999) has been seen as the fuller break with that representational past.[20](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/film/twin-town-and-welsh-cinema-the-late-1990s) In 2024 the cast reunited for *La Cha Cha*, a film written and shot on the Gower Peninsula during the pandemic.[14](https://herald.wales/national-news/entertainment/twin-town-cast-reunites-for-new-film-shot-in-wales/)
## References
1. [Twin Town, Film Hub Wales / Canolfan Ffilm Cymru](https://canolfanffilmcymru.org/ffilmiau/twin-town/)
2. [Trash town?, Hugh Linehan, The Irish Times, 12 April 1997](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/trash-town-1.61701)
3. [Twin Town writer inspires students, Gower College Swansea](https://www.gcs.ac.uk/news/twin-town-writer-inspires-students)
4. [Twin Town (1997), British Film Institute](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/baaf930b-d3ae-55ba-8b36-0adb117fd3f8/twin-town)
5. [Twin Town (1997) full cast and crew, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120394/fullcredits/)
6. [Twin Town (1997), Box Office Mojo](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0120394/credits/)
7. [Twin Town, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/twin_town)
8. [Twin Town (1997), Pulse of Cinema](https://pulseofcinema.com/en/film/twin-town/)
9. [Twin Town review, Adrian Martin, July 1997](https://www.adrianmartinfilmcritic.com/reviews/t/twin_town.html)
10. [Twin Town movie review, Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 30 May 1997](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/twin-town-1997)
11. [Made in Wales, Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent, 3 April 1997](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/made-in-wales-1264852.html)
12. [Twin Geeks, Michael Dwyer, The Irish Times, 25 April 1997](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/twin-geeks-1.66029)
13. [Today's Television, Gerard Gilbert, The Independent, 19 April 1997](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/today-s-television-5571446.html)
14. [Twin Town cast reunites for new film shot in Wales, Herald.Wales](https://herald.wales/national-news/entertainment/twin-town-cast-reunites-for-new-film-shot-in-wales/)
15. [Twin Town, British Railway Movie Database](https://railwaymoviedatabase.com/twin-town/)
16. [Twin Town, British Board of Film Classification](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/twin-town-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yote1ndk)
17. [Twin Town: Double Trouble, Desson Howe, The Washington Post, 30 May 1997](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/05/30/twin-town-double-trouble/c594b98c-4d76-4943-aeca-8b40d3aa3d45/)
18. [Rough 'n' Tumble Comedy in 'Twin Town', Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, 16 May 1997](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-16-ca-59173-story.html)
19. [Twin Town review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/twin-town)
20. [Twin Town and Welsh cinema in the late 1990s, OpenLearn, The Open University](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/film/twin-town-and-welsh-cinema-the-late-1990s)
21. [Elena Boschi, PhD thesis on Welsh identity in film, University of Liverpool](https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3515/4/BoschiElena_Sep2010_3515.pdf)
22. [Swansea University research on Twin Town's cult status](https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa44723/Download/0044723-05102018094029.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1939 to 1997*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license